The UCI WorldTour is failing. It’s losing money, most of its events fail to attract a sizeable audience, the promotion-relegation points system was refined but still causes consternation, and teams outside of the WorldTour are having no problems persuading riders to drop down a division; in fact, more are choosing to be ‘demoted’ than promoted. Yet the UCI has just muddied the waters further.
At the governing body’s annual congress in Kigali, Rwanda last week, the UCI’s president David Lappartient – elected for his third and in theory final four-year team – announced that from 2027 UCI points gained in three other disciplines (mountain bike, cyclocross and gravel) would be added to a road team’s overall UCI points tally, therefore increasing the numbers of available points in the battle to be one of the top-18 ranked teams after the three-year cycle. On one hand, this seems like a fair amendment to the rules – racing across various disciplines is becoming increasingly common. But on the other hand, it’s worth reminding the UCI that the UCI WorldTour is a road-based competition. It does not encompass other disciplines.
Why is this important? Because the WorldTour – men’s and women’s – needs a complete overhaul. Perhaps, even, to be binned and started again. Yet the UCI seems hellbent on making it ever bigger and more confusing. Far less comprehensible and understandable, at a time when figures across the sport are united in calling for a top-tier road division that is far more comprehensible and understandable.
To begin with the list of problems. The WorldTour in its current format began in 2011, and it currently comprises 171 days of racing in the men’s calendar, and 85 race days in the women’s calendar. Some of those days overlap. The UCI’s latest annual report detailed how the WorldTour made a loss of €383k in 2024. Similar numbers are reported each year.
The women's WorldTour calendar is as condensed as the men's – some races barely register a flicker of interest yet are given top-tier status. Image by Thomas Maheux/SWpix.com
This should not be a surprise: outside of the three Grand Tours and the five Monuments, even the most committed cycling fans barely watch the other races. How, then, can you make it a profit-making enterprise if there isn't enough interest in it? Iain Trealor of Escape Collective recently advised newcomers to the sport that they only need to watch six races all season. Six. They should watch the highlights of 11, he wrote, and skip 19. It was a damning verdict on the appeal of the sport, but few would disagree with that assessment. Do you watch the Renewi Tour or Tour of Guangxi? Do you watch all 28 days of spring stage racing between Paris-Nice, Tirreno-Adriatico, Volta a Catalunya and Itzulia Basque Country? Very, very few do. You can see the problem: there are too many races. Yet the UCI added a new race last year – the Copenhagen Sprint. It was won by Jordi Meeus, in case you cared.
It’s why so many in the sport are desperate for reform, and it’s why for the past four years so many have been working on the Saudi Arabia-funded One Cycling project, a venture that would streamline the racing calendar, as well as introducing more circuits to keep roadside fans entertained for longer. But Lappartient and the UCI effectively killed the project in the summer, warning that any team or organiser who carried on with the plans would face expulsion from the WorldTour.
If such a threat was followed out, that would spell the end of teams, as they wouldn’t be able to race top-tier events like the Tour de France. But a notable number of team managers are privately asking, so what? If that’s what it takes to force through change, so be it. And besides, the WorldTour’s value is becoming increasingly worthless and bordering on meaningless. From next season, the three best-ranked second division ProTeams will be invited to race all WorldTour events. So basically there are 21 WorldTour teams, not 18. The two teams relegated from the WorldTour at the end of the 2022 season – Lotto and Israel-PremierTech – have both cruised to promotion this time around. Not being in the WorldTour didn’t harm them, but emboldened them. Lotto even skipped the Giro d’Italia, a luxury not afforded to WorldTour teams. What’s more, the decision earlier this season to add an extra wildcard spot for teams in Grand Tours opens the door to the biggest races to even more teams. This author is in favour of that ruling (Q36.5 were the 23rd team at the Vuelta a España and Tom Pidcock finished third), but it once again lessens the value of WorldTour status.
Tom Pidcock's decision to leave the WorldTour has proven to be a successful one, and it has inspired others to do the same. Image by Zac Williams/SWPix.com.
In most other sports, if you’re in the top division, you’re generally more attractive to sponsors and athletes, and your finances are better off for it. Not in cycling. Teams receive a few thousands euros in allowances to attend WorldTour races, and then make up the shortfall themselves. Racing is obligatory, so they essentially pay to race. ProTeams Q36.5, Tudor Cycling and Uno-X have more budget than many of the lower-ranked WorldTour teams, some of whom are even close to folding (Arkéa-B&B Hotels), merging with each other (Lotto and Intermarché-Wanty) or facing budget concerns (Picnic PostNL, Jayco-AlUla and Mathieu van der Poel's Alpecin-Deceuninck). So very clearly, being in the premier league of cycling does not mean greater riches and a more prosperous future.
Riders are now seeing that. A number of WorldTour mainstays, including Eddie Dunbar and Fred Wright, are joining Q36.5, inspired by Pidcock’s decision to drop down a level from Ineos Grenadiers to the Swiss team a year earlier. It’s a similar story at Tudor Pro Cycling, who signed Julian Alaphilippe and Marc Hirschi a year previously. They’ll be joined by Stefan Küng next season.
Julian Alaphilippe dropped down a division this season but is still winning World Tour races. Image by Bruce Rollinson/SWpix.com
These moves all add to the overall feeling that most in the sport are now regularly uttering: what is the point and meaning of the WorldTour? The sport desperately needs a user-friendly, digestible divisional system for its races. The UCI, to their credit, appear to be trying to address the system somewhat with the announcement that the top-five ranked ProTeams must be invited to all second-tier ProSeries races from 2026, an attempt at adding a degree of certainty and clarity about the level of competition at those events. But far, far more needs to be done.
The organisers of the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race or Hamburg Cyclassics might not like it, but it’s an objective fact that their races do not share the same hype and prestige as Strade Bianche or Omloop Het Nieuwsblad does. But the UCI judges that they do. You can make the same comparison with the Tour de Pologne and the Critérium du Dauphine (which becomes the Tour Auvergne-Rhône Alpes next year, a mouthful of a name change that is typical of a sport once again confusing its audience).
To not just grow and attract new fans but to maintain its current fan base, the loss-making WorldTour must be fundamentally redesigned. Less races in the top division, whereby the best teams and best riders have to compete, and then a series of ‘challenger’ races beneath them when new or returning stars can shine. Because right now the accounts books, TV audience figures and riders career moves all come to the same damning and conclusive conclusion: the WorldTour is failing. Unfortunately, the UCI seems unwilling to properly address it.
